CHASKA, Minn., Aug. 16 -- There had to be a list of players who could wake up on a Sunday morning, face both a deficit to and a pairing with Tiger Woods in the final round of a major championship, and handle both themselves and their opponent's uncanny ability to execute when others collapse. Phil Mickelson would seem to have the game, Padraig Harrington the nerve, Jim Furyk the focus, Sergio García the talent, Rocco Mediate the what-me-worry attitude.

Prior to Sunday, though, none of them -- indeed, no one in the world -- had felled a front-running Woods in the final round of a major. The statistics had become rote in golf circles -- 14 times a leader, 14 times a winner, for perhaps the best player ever.

"I've seen throughout Tiger's career," Y.E. Yang said Sunday evening here, "that a lot of players have folded."

Yang, now, is the one who did not. Faced with both a two-stroke deficit and the specter of Woods as his playing partner, the 37-year-old South Korean -- known to only hardcore golf fans prior to this weekend -- pulled off his sport's most astonishing result in the dozen years since Woods first won a major. Sunday, he shot a 2-under-par 70 to not only catch Woods, but to resoundingly pass him, winning the 91st PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club by three shots.

"I've sort of visualized this quite a few times," Yang, the first Asian-born major champion, said through an interpreter. "Playing against the best player, if not one of the best players in the history of golf, playing with him in the final round in a major championship. . . . When the chance came, I sort of thought that, hey, I could always play a good round of golf and -- Tiger's good, but he could always have a bad day. And I guess today was one of those days."

That's precisely what it was. Previously, when Woods led majors, he averaged 69.5 shots in his final round. His playing partner, faced with the swirl and the spotlight, averaged 73.1. Not only did Yang buck that trend, but Woods did too, with a closing 75. Previously, too, when Woods led those majors, he authored the shots that people remember still -- the putt he stalked in the playoff against Bob May at the 2000 PGA at Valhalla, the chip-in on the 16th at Augusta in the 2005 Masters, the birdie putt on the 72nd hole in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines that forced a playoff with Mediate.

Sunday, though, it was Yang who provided two signature moments. The first was a brilliant chip shot from 60 feet across the green at the drivable par-4 14th, a championship-turning eagle. The last was a 206-yard hybrid up the hill at No. 18, when his advantage over Woods was a single shot, when his nerves might have frayed. He struck it clean -- "Pretty classy, wasn't it?" said his caddie, A.J. Montecinos -- and it landed eight feet from the cup, finishing off Woods.

"I don't think he really missed a shot all day," Woods said of his playing partner.

What all this means for Yang is somewhat obvious, because first-time major winners -- 2009 U.S. Open champ Lucas Glover and British Open champ Stewart Cink among them -- talk about how their lives change, how they have to deal with more attention and requests for their time. Yang will deal with that going forward.

"It hasn't really sunken in yet," he said.

What it means for Woods, though, isn't as clear. He has now finished second in a major six times, but none in this fashion. Still just more than a year removed from surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament and fix a stress fracture in his left leg, Woods finished the season without a major for the first time since 2004. Though he won the previous two weeks on the PGA Tour before arriving at Hazeltine, his career at this point is solely about winning majors, about matching and surpassing Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 titles.